Month: October 2020

The apple tree was a gift. We’d just moved to a new home and I had a new baby on my hip. Friends brought lunch…and an apple tree. 

We did not have a per­fect spot for the tree, so we plant­ed it in the best spot we could. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this was part­ly under the shade of a large estab­lished ash tree, but the apple tree was so lit­tle we fig­ured it would­n’t be a problem.…

The baby grew and the tree grew. To begin with our apple tree had about as many leaves as she had hair, but some­how it thrived in its less than ade­quate loca­tion. And she, too, thrived—and grew hair!

By the time she could eat apples, we were get­ting a few on our lit­tle stick of a tree. It had entered its ado­les­cent stage—tall and bit gan­g­ly, not very filled out. But it pro­duced won­der­ful apples, none-the-less. By then we’d lost its tag and so did­n’t know what kind of apples they were. Lat­er I would do some research and com­par­isons and we’re pret­ty con­fi­dent they’re Har­al­sons: Firm tex­ture with a com­plex tart fla­vor. Good for fresh eat­ing and cook­ing. Espe­cial­ly good pie apple. 

Some years there were enough apples for a pie or some apple­sauce. Some years there were just enough to be plucked com­ing home from the school bus on an autumn after­noon. The apple tree grew taller (and filled out some) as the chil­dren grew taller, and it gave both nour­ish­ment and delight as our kids grew up.

Even­tu­al­ly, we noticed that the loom­ing ash tree was like­ly com­pro­mis­ing our lit­tle apple tree. But what was to be done? They were both mature trees—it was­n’t like they could be moved. The apple tree adapt­ed, stretch­ing toward the street, away from the shade, chas­ing the sun. It became notice­ably crooked, but only when looked at from the neigh­bor’s yard. From the house it looked fine, and so our neglect con­tin­ued. But then the ash tree began to look dan­ger­ous and seemed doomed with the Emer­ald Ash Bor­er on the loose. So we had the tree tak­en down. This was unex­pect­ed­ly dif­fi­cult, even though it was a scrap­py tree that felt dan­ger­ous to walk or park under, and even though it was keep­ing its thumb on the apple tree. Los­ing a tree is always hard. What I think of as The Scar is still vis­i­ble in the yard. It was a big tree.

We thought the apple tree would straight­en itself with more sun­shine, but it has rather held its crooked course. Like most plants we grow, it kin­da has had to fend for itself…we’ve been hap­pi­ly con­sumed with grow­ing chil­dren until quite recently. 

Spring 2019, the apple tree put out a bevy of beau­ti­ful blos­soms. Alas, a late spring frost killed every sin­gle one and we had zero apples last fall as “the baby” start­ed her senior year in high school.

Spring 2020, that baby on my hip when our apple tree came to us grad­u­at­ed from high school. The tree out­did itself in celebration—made 2019’s excep­tion­al blos­som out­put look mangy! It was a major sign of life for us while we were quar­an­tined in the ear­ly days of COVID-19.

There was no late frost last spring.

Come fall, our girl went to college—far away and dur­ing a pan­dem­ic (she’s doing just fine.) And the blos­soms that turned to hard green apples over the sum­mer turned to red apples in the fall…and we began to real­ize how many apples we had on our hands. So did the neigh­bor­hood. Peo­ple walk­ing and dri­ving by slowed down or stopped to gawk.

My hus­band guessti­mates over a thou­sand apples have been picked—not count­ing the hun­dreds that fell off the tree when the top pruned itself. Not count­ing all the ones that have gone to the squir­rels. We have spent our first weeks of emp­ty-nest­ing pro­cess­ing apples. Work­ing togeth­er, we can fill four pie pans and the crock­pot or food dehy­dra­tor in about 45 minutes. 

We should’ve kept track, of course, but we’ve hard­ly been able to keep up, so we’re stuck with what we’re con­fi­dent are con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates. We’ve made close to twen­ty pies—eight of them in the freez­er now. (I make a real­ly good apple pie, if I do say so myself.) Twelve quarts of apple sauce at least (they’re buried in the freez­er and hard to count now.) As many batch­es of dried apples—each batch using about 50 apples. And we’ve pressed large bags of apples upon friends, neigh­bors, and rela­tions, of course. We’ve encour­aged chil­dren in the street to steal from the tree. We sent out invi­ta­tions to the squir­rels to make merry.

Abun­dance does­n’t even begin to describe our apple sit­u­a­tion this year. What a gift that tree is! And what a joy to think of the par­al­lels with our daugh­ter’s growth—it is, real­ly, her tree. When she comes home for Thanks­giv­ing, she will be greet­ed with apple pies, apple sauce, apple scones and apple cake.….

(And yes, we have some­one who knows about apple trees com­ing to assess the sit­u­a­tion. It deserves a lit­tle TLC, that sweet apple tree.)

We start­ed fall cleanup in the gar­den this past week­end. I can hard­ly bear it, but needs must. Took down all the climb­ing and tan­gled beans, which was a work­out in and of itself, and which opened things up con­sid­er­ably. My hus­band built a new peony/dahlia gar­den fea­ture that we’re awful­ly excit­ed about even though it just looks like dirt now…but it holds such hope and promise for next spring! The E.B. White line about his bulb-plant­i­ng wife “calm­ly plot­ting the res­ur­rec­tion” comes to mind. (Fun Fact: The sign above the door to our gar­den is the name of the gar­den­ing col­umn Kather­ine White wrote for The New York­er.)

Soon we’ll have to clear out the toma­to plant skele­tons, the friz­zled zin­nia remains (which I hate to do until I’m sure the goldfinch­es have moved through), as well as the still bois­ter­ous marigolds. It has to be done—there’s the fall com­post appli­ca­tion and two new beds to install replac­ing “com­post­ing” wood ones. It’ll be quite a job—hopefully we have a long fall. Nei­ther of us wants to be out there in the snow.

I should be clear: my hus­band does all the hard gar­den work. This leaves me to wan­der about tuck­ing in new seeds and plants, los­ing myself in day­dreams and pos­si­ble book plots while water­ing and har­vest­ing veg­eta­bles, and cre­at­ing small bou­quets of joy from the flow­ers. I try to pull my weight, but I get dis­tract­ed. I do try not to make more work for him, though I’m not always suc­cess­ful at that either.

For me the gar­den is a beau­ti­ful teacher and work­ing metaphor of writ­ing. This fall the writ­ing par­al­lels and insights have been many. In 2013, when we cre­at­ed the gar­den space that takes up much of our back­yard, we put a size­able pump­kin patch at the back of it. For a few years we tried our hand at grow­ing giant pump­kins because I was writ­ing a book about grow­ing a giant pump­kin. We nev­er put near­ly as much work into it as true grow­ers do and the results were still star­tling. It was a fun project when the kids were still home.

But, alas, the kids have grown up, and the last cou­ple of years I’ve been all about flow­ers, so the pump­kin patch has been recon­script­ed to be a flower patch, though so far we con­tin­ue to call it the pump­kin patch so as to dis­tin­guish it from the oth­er flower patch­es in the gar­den. We moved some black-eyed susans and cone flow­ers of var­i­ous col­ors from the site of the new peony and dahlia gar­den. I filled in with col­or­ful zin­nias, salvia, and marigolds this sum­mer. And then a won­der­ful gift cer­tifi­cate got us some phlox, gold­en rod, and car­di­nal flower and the peren­ni­al like, which have been put to bed along the back fence, care­ful­ly leav­ing emp­ty pock­ets for sun­flow­ers, which I’m deter­mined to grow despite our squir­rel issues, which are many and mad­den­ing. I spent the sum­mer bat­tling what I think is purslane, which crept along under every­thing. (Yes, I know purslane is not only edi­ble but super nutri­tious, but it also looks a lot like spurge, which is poi­so­nous, so….)

As these gar­den changes were being plot­ted and car­ried out, I start­ed a full-revi­sion of the nov­el I’ve been work­ing on for four long years up in my office over­look­ing the gar­den. It’s a bit of a sprawl, lack­ing the fenc­ing and orga­ni­za­tion of the gar­den. There are many tan­gled parts and tak­ing them apart has been messy and time con­sum­ing. I’m wait­ing for things to feel like they’ve “opened up.” I’ve moved whole chap­ters, small scenes, bit and pieces…weeded words and sen­tences along the way…imagining what this sto­ry could be if I can just get all the right things in the right places in the right way.

I’ve ripped out ellipses (which is like purslane/spurge in my writing—it’s every­where!) Points of view and the time­line have changed sev­er­al times. All along the way, I’ve plant­ed love­ly bits of color—like the annu­als in a garden—so as to have pock­ets beau­ty and not despair at the mess of the whole.

When I get frus­trat­ed, I go out to the gar­den. There’s noth­ing like walk­ing through that screen door—it’s a def­i­nite thresh­old to a dif­fer­ent place. As I water and weed, pick and pro­tect, the nov­el­ist-brain often loosens, show­ing me what to do next with the chaot­ic knot­ted up chapters.

I’ve had to grow into gardening—it doesn’t come as nat­u­ral­ly to me as it does to my husband—but I’m begin­ning to think of it as an inte­gral part of my writ­ing process. The skills are so sim­i­lar: imag­i­na­tion to see what could be, dai­ly work, con­stant weed­ing and dead­head­ing, let­ting things com­post, mov­ing things around, pock­ets of love­li­ness amidst the tran­si­tion­ing pieces…. No won­der so many writ­ers are gardeners!

I hate to see it go—this year espe­cial­ly, as it sig­nals our return to a more soli­tary indoor life. But I hope to hold onto the inspi­ra­tion it pro­vides this win­ter as I keep weed­ing and plant­i­ng and mov­ing things around in the nov­el, if not the dirt. Onward & Upward In The Nov­el, I say!